Written By GCPSH Principal Remedial Massage Therapist, Thea Dillon
Christmas came early for me this year! For two weeks in December (4th-18th), I had the privilege of working as a Massage Therapist for the Australian Swim Team at World Short Course Championships. The 5 day meet was held in Istanbul, Turkey, with the temporary indoor competiton and warmup pool for the 1600 competing swimmers erected inside a basketball stadium on the outskirts of the city.
Being winter in Turkey at this time of year, it was rather chilly, with the maximum temperature rarely exceeding 8degrees, minimum temp generally 2-3 degrees. In fact, it snowed only a few days after we arrived back home. With a population of around 20million people the traffic in Istanbul was crazy .. organised chaos is a fairly accurate description. This being the case, our team hotel was located close to the pool, not to mention right next to the airport, on the outskirts of the city. Being atleast 20km (and an hour’s drive) from the ancient city centre, we had limited opportunity to check out the famous historical and tourist areas.
We arrived in Istanbul 6 days before the meet started, giving the athletes plenty of time to recover from jetlag and get acclimatised to the pool and conditions. This meant that we did get the opportunity to travel as a team into the city for a 2 hour visit to the Blue Mosque and surrounding attractions, and a brief 1 hour visit to the Grand Bazaar (indoor markets with around 5000 stalls – features in the opening scenes of the latest James Bond movie) perfect timing for some Christmas shopping!!
I was working alongside Massage Therapist Amanda Foulkes from Sydney and Physios Russell Smallwood (Sunshine Coast) and Lauren Harms (Brisbane). With a relatively small team of 19 athletes selected given the tough qualification standards set by Swimming Australia, our workload was pretty steady with occasional really busy and really quiet periods.
I spent those first 6 days either massaging athletes at the team hotel, attending swim training sessions (once a day), or heading to the local shops for a Turkish coffee or Apple Tea. The authentic turkish delight, pastries (ie – bakclava) and chocolates in Turkey have to be seen and tasted to be believed!! With Islam being the main religion we heard the call to prayer over the loud speakers several times each day, the first of which a ready-made alarm clock just after 6am (an hour before sunrise).
Once we were in competition, massage and physio treatment was generally undertaken at the pool. Each Team is allocated (more like finds and fights for) some space at the competition venue to set up treatment tables, use for stretching and dryland warmup, and in our case, an ice bath to use for recovery. Each day during competition, our team of Massage Therapists and Physios head to the pool with the first athletes and generally leave with the last athletes, meaning that we were often leaving the hotel at 7am, returning at 2-2:30pm for lunch, then heading to a team meeting at 4:15pm before heading back to the pool, returning for dinner at around 10pm.
For those of you who aren’t sure what the difference between short course and long course racing is, at a short course meet the events are held in a 25metre pool, instead of the olympic size 50m.
Racing in a shorter pool means that the skill component is especially important – in addition to being super fast swimmers, the best short course swimmers in the world are great starters, exceptional turners and have fantastic underwater skills off the wall.
The Aussie Team on this trip was really great to work with. From the athletes to the coaches and other support staff, there was a really positive, enthusiastic attitude throughout the group, and a really strong sense of team spirit & Aussie pride.
As for results, the majority of athletes swam PBs or close to and we medalled in every relay that we contested (an indication of strong team spirit I think). Standout athletes of the meet were Bobby Hurley (Gold 50m Backstroke and twice broke the Australian record), Sarah Katsoulis (Bronze 50m Breaststroke; 4th 100m Breaststroke), Kenny To (Silver 100m medley) and Angie Bainbridge (Bronze 100m Freestyle).
Here’s hoping I will have the opportunity to work with the Aussie Swim Team again in 2013.. As for now, it’s back to work in clinic at GCPSH
